Not Rs. 7,800 crore , seized assets’ value less than half

NEW DELHI: There is bad news, too. The assets of Mehul Choksi and Nirav Modi's seized by probe agencies after they fled the country are worth only Rs. 3,800 crore, far less than the whooping Rs. 7,800 crore estimated by agencies earlier, an official at the Enforcement Directorate told NDTV after a fresh revaluation of the seized assets. According to the exclusive report of the TV channel, the sharp drop in the revaluation conducted by the Enforcement Directorate could be because the probe agencies had initially erred by factoring in the highly inflated retail value of the jewellery.

A part of the problem was that the uncle-nephew duo was selling low-end jewellery at highly exaggerated prices. A fresh revaluation was ordered to address this lacunae, which has now drastically scaled down the value of assets seized.

The agencies got wiser after two men associated with Nirav Modi's jewellery chain revealed that the company routinely exaggerated the value of the jewellery it sold. Its books, they said, were likely to contain the inflated prices, which would mean that the value of the jewellery seized by the agency was much less than the investigators were expecting.

In February, the ED had seized gold, diamonds, jewellery, precious stones, expensive watches, luxury cars, and paintings, etcetera, during 260 searches. Several properties were also attached by the agency.